Nutrition Tracking

So, I decided to stick with the FitDay software. It gives me enough flexibility to loose about this project, or to take it seriously and keep a pretty detailed history of my nutritional intake, and also activity as I have discovered.

I am trying to do this as thoroughly and accurately as possible, so I utilizing the Create Custom Food feature bigtyme. I search for the food under their given options, and then use that as a base template to insert the true nutritional values for the specific item I have eaten since the program only gives an average value, that in most items has been eerily close to my observed values.

Surprisingly, the nutritional values for many of the products I consume is easily identifiable on the web, albeit I may have to do a bit of meticulous work with data gathering and transferring. Although they don't always give you the full-listed nutritional details. FitDay includes % Daily Values for 19 nutrients. Products usually only carry the main ones like Vit A & C, Iron and Calcium. Of course these are really important, but another one people should pay attention to is Niacin (Vit B3). In essential metabolic cell activities, Niacin is  precursor to NADH, NAD+, NADP+, and NADPH (you should recognize these from biology class if you paid any attention..) .. psychiatric symptoms of Niacin deficiency include : irritability, poor concentration, anxiety, fatigue, restlessness, apathy, and depression, and thus holistic healers recommended high dosages of Niacin to cure depression and anxiety. Also, increase HDL-cholesterol (the "good" one). Really, you want to pay attention to all of them because they all work together (BigPharm = one disease, one pill; but naturally vitamins and other nutrients are a cure for a variety of ailments, and thus require a holistic approach). Yes, upon further research it seems that a variety of different vitamin deficiencies can cause similar problems - B vitamin family is particularly important to emotional and mental well-being.

Which is why I use a food already listed on FitDay as a base as it includes 19 nutrients instead of 4, and since this expected value is close enough to my actual values, then I assume that these 15 other values I don't have are close enough to what I might have and thus use them and edit the 4 I do have to their actual values. I think I made that a zillion times more complicated in writing.

So because I am just starting out, it is requiring quite a bit of work, and definitely effort, to keep track of my diet. I want to put in my foods and keep track of what I eat, but I dont want to put in an entry that isn't accurate, but then again I dont always want to sit down and invest 30 minutes into describing the smoothie I made (especially when I make a different one every time). But I figure once I get my basic ingredients, as there definitely is items I eat all the time, then soon I will only have a minimum of effort to put in and it won't be so bad. Not that I'm being lazy, I like doing science-like work, I just have a hard time establishing routines (entering my data everytime I eat) and/or remembering things (like exactly what did I put into that smoothie, and how much? and was there anything else I ate today?..)